October 2, 2018

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner has written the adaptation of the musical originally penned by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim with music by Leonard Bernstein. Spielberg has spent the better part of the year looking for stars for his movie, with actors needing to be able to sing, dance, and, of course, act their hearts out for the story that transposes Romeo and Juliet into a 1950s New York setting featuring white and Puerto Rican gangs....

The guys from Red Letter Media think his name sounds like an anagram. And that he should have played young Han Solo in the Star Wars Story movie. He does look a LOT more like Harrison Ford than the guy they ended up with.

God help him if he doesn't cast Bernardo, Maria and Anita with actors who are certifiably Puerto Rican. If you cut them, they better bleed Puerto Rican. The whole world is watching, Spielberg. That's probably what is taking so long.

And when is this supposed to take place? Are there really white gangs in Manhattan? Are there white gangs anywhere outside of prison? I guess maybe in the opioid trade now? But, in Manhattan?

I really don't see this working believably if it is set today. Gangs in the US in 1961 were like, gasp, juvenile delinquents and stuff. They skipped school sometimes. They had... rumbles! Oh my!

Gangs in the US in 2018 just open up their cache of military grade weapons and fucking kill you and anyone nearby you and other randos for good measure. If this is set in 2018 and they bring the serious threat of mass death that gangs in 2018 represent into the plot, that is going to be really awkward. But if they don't, then it's going to be really stupid.

And if it is just set in 1960 or so it risks being just completely irrelevant, a throwback to an innocent time when people thought crime was skyrocketing but really had no idea the scale of what was coming.

I'd like to see the remake of the great NYC gang movie, The Warriors. Bonus: Lazlo!

A battle of gigantic proportions is looming in the neon underground of New York City. The armies of the night number 100,000, they outnumber the police 5 to 1, and tonight they're after the Warriors - a street gang blamed unfairly for a rival gang leader's death. This contemporary action-adventure story takes place at night, underground, in the sub-culture of gang warfare that rages from Coney Island to Manhattan to the Bronx. Members of the Warriors fight for their lives, seek to survive in the urban jungle and learn the meaning of loyalty. This intense and stylized film is a dazzling achievement for cinematographer Andrew Laszlo.

Most of the gangs of that era were white: White Irish gangs against white Italian gangs, IIRC. They grew up into the Irish Mafia, the Italian Mafia and the Jewish Mafia. Were there Jewish gangs back then?

Spielberg made Bridge of Spies. That movie dramatized the plight of Gary Powers whose U2 plane was shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft. Here's an interesting,, little known fact about Soviet antiaircraft missiles. They were equipped with proximity fuses that came to the Soviets courtesy of the Rosenberg spy ring.......Kushner wrote Angels in America. That play depicted Ethel Rosenberg as a benign presence in contrast to the malignant Roy Cohn. Roy was a closeted homosexual who supported Republicans. Ethel was a closeted Communist who supported Stalin. You can see why Kushner was so down on Cohn and so worshipful of Ethel........,I'm afraid that their remake of West Side Story will sour every positive memory I have of the first film. Spielberg should take another shot at The Great Gatsby, Spider-Man, or Pride and Prejudice. Those remakes are frequently better or as good as the originals.

The late-1980s demise of the Westies -- an Irish gang in the West Side neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen (now known as "the Clinton")-- brought the era of white gangs on Manhattan to an end. Jimmie Coonan, the boss Westie, is still in prison, but most of the others -- including, notably, the Westies' enigmatic baby-faced enforcer, Mickey Featherstone -- are free men. Same goes for Billie Beattie, Kevin Kelly, and Kenny Shannon. Featherstone disappeared with his wife into witness protection and has kept his nose clean. It is known that he had a son who in the army who served in Iraq.

The Westies are a particular, and (admittedly) peculiar, fascination of mine.

West Side story gang warfare was quite Homeric, everyone observed and abided by Homeric protocols and standards of behavior, they chose dueling heroes to settle matters in the "space between armies," and the heroes fought with edged weapons.

Considering the sort of revisions that opera directors get up to, I would expect something like an all-female or all-gay cast. Or both. Next could be an all-gay remake of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

I'd like to see a remake of Bonfire of the Vanities. That was a great novel that never really came alive on the screen. Maybe there's something about malice, spite, and social climbing that doesn't make for great drama on the screen as opposed to the page. The novel Vanity Fair, which Tom Wolfe had in the back of his mind when writing Bonfire, has never been successfully adapted. I think Margaret Mitchell used the same dynamic between Scarlet and Melanie that Thackeray used with Becky and Amelia. GWTW might be the best film version of Vanity Fair.

They have to go with Black-on-Puerto Rican for this one, or possibly a mixed-race gang vs. Puerto Ricans.

First, a white street gang isn't believable, second, no white people can dance anymore. Well, a few can, but it would be the wrong kind of dancing to the wrong kind of music, or they wouldn't be good enough, or it wouldn't be allowed because of cultural appropriation.

I love West Side Story. As a young girl I would sing along to the record which was the movie sound track album, I always loved the cover with the fire escape stairs drawn on a red background. I liked the movie but I always thought the casting could have been better keeping it off my list of perfect musical movies. Oklahoma is my perfect movie musical. I would welcome a remake with actors who can both sing and dance.(Rita Moreno was my favorite in the movie). I won't be happy if they don't create the atmosphere of the era...like the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel does, keep the original choreography and all the songs.

I hope they don't change the songs to make them hip-hop a la Hamilton. There's just so much of this updating a person can take. It was bad enough when all the musicals had to be classic-rock operas. Ugh.

On the other hand, a West Side Story jukebox musical with Wu-Tang clan songs could very well be the Best Thing Ever. Somebody needs to call Lin-Manuel Miranda and RZA.

My guess is that whoever owns the rights to West Side Story is not going to allow too much jiggery-pokery with it. There was a 2009 Broadway revival in which Spanish dialog and lyrics were worked in where appropriate, to much acclaim.

Tom Wolfe is hard to transfer to the theater, so much is in the turn of phrase, and the description.How do you use a bit like “social x-rays?” Not in dialogue surely.Maybe if there is a wry narrator role.

I find West Side Story to be a deformed "take" on Romeo and Juliet. R&J is a classic tragedy, in that the protagonists are destroyed by their own runaway emotions. (Their circumstances are a contributing factor, but ultimately they kill themselves.)